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The Philippines Central Conference of The United Methodist Church (Filipino: ''Kumperensya Sentral ng Pilipinas ng Nagkaisang Iglesya Metodista'') is a collection of Annual Conferencess of The United Methodist Church in the Philippines that are organised much like Jurisdictional Conferences in the United States. The Philippines Central Conference is considered a member Church of the World Methodist Council, and independent of The United Methodist Church in the United States. It is also a member of the Christian Conference of Asia and the National Council of Churches in the Philippines as "The United Methodist Church in the Philippines", representing the denomination as its Philippine counterpart. The ''Philippines Central Conference'' is further subdivided into twenty-two (22) regions, called Annual Conference, under the authorities of three Episcopal Areas. These Annual Conferences are subdivided into "Districts," which provide further administrative functions for the operation of local churches in cooperation with each other under the supervision of the District Superintendent. This structure is vital to Methodism, and is referred to as "connexionalism". The Philippines Central Conference has a professing membership of about 200,540, but it serves a much larger community of close to 1 million. From six annual conferences in 1968, The United Methodist Church in the Philippines has grown to 19 annual conferences located in three episcopal areas.〔(Mission + message = Filipino United Methodists )〕 And now, with 24 Annual conferences. ==History== The first Methodist presence on the islands was that of Rev. Maj. George C. Stull, a minister from the Montana Annual Conference, which was a part of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He originally went to the Philippines as the chaplain of the First Montana Regiment, and established the first ME church. In the Stull letter—a correspondence sent from Stull to his home conference for the annual conference—Stull enumerates several of his accomplishments since coming to the islands. Among them is the fact that he commissioned the first Filipino to preach using his "elder's privilege in an emergency."〔Minutes of the ... session of the Montana Annual Conference ...〕 In 1908, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church authorized the organization of the Philippine Islands Mission into the Philippine Islands Annual Conference, under the jurisdiction of the Southern Asia Central Conference. The work in the Philippines grew quickly and in 1936, the General Conference enabled the organization of the Philippines Central Conference during the following quadrennium. This act was ratified at the 1939 Uniting Conference which created The Methodist Church. The first session of the Philippines Central Conference was held at the Central Methodist Church in Manila, beginning February 29, 1940. Following years of growth, the 1960 General Conference approved a second episcopal area in the Philippines Central Conference: the Baguio Area (composed of the Northwest Philippines Annual Conference, the Northern Philippines Annual Conference, and the Mindanao Provisional Annual Conference) which joined the Manila Area (composed of the Philippines Annual Conference, Southwest Philippines Provisional Annual Conference, and the Middle Philippines Annual Conference). The 1984 General Conference mandated the addition of a third episcopal area, the Davao Area. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Philippines Central Conference (United Methodist Church)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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